Justin Bibb, Sir Yacht and the Future of Politics
You're going to take your propaganda from your favorite influencer and like it.
Welcome to the third dispatch of Three for Free Thursdays, a promotion from The Rooster.
If you want to understand the future of American politics, consider the fact the White House leaned on “TikTok stars” to be loyal acolytes in disseminating official propaganda on the war in Ukraine to voters, unbeknownst to them:
From Taylor Lorenz of washingtonpost.com back in March:
On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.
I’m old enough for the phrase “TikTok star” to make me walk off a bridge. But “social media influencers” being official propagandists is the the future of politics in which we already we live.
Consider this post from Cleveland mayor Justin Bibb with Sir Yacht:
Undoubtedly, at this point, there are multiple readers asking, “Who in the hell is Sir Yacht?” If that’s you, The Rooster encourages you to close this dispatch and move along about your day. Seriously, you will be better off for consuming the rest of this post.
Seriously, walk away…
Okay, last chance….
Fine. Fuck it. We’ll do it alive.
The rest of us know that Sir Yacht, also known as Joey Kinsley, is some schlub from Rocky River, a particularly cursed suburb of Cleveland. He hails from a family rich enough to place for their adult son to consider being a “TikTok star” as a viable career path.
Sir Yacht earned his reputation by using the age old trick of throwing shit against the wall until something stuck. Here is one of many examples:

In 2020, he made a series of totally fabricated predications that culminated August with him claiming “insider sources within the Big Ten” had told him the Council of Presidents and Chancellors had voted for the return of Big Ten football in September of 2020.
That would have been huge news if the Council of Presidents and Chancellors actually convened:

But eventually Big Ten football did return, and didn’t stop Cleveland media from covering the broken clock as a legitimate news story.
From wkyc.com:
The man, known to over thirty thousand Twitter followers simply as “Sir Yacht”, is Joey Kinsley, a digital marketing specialist who moonlights as a content creator across social platforms, including TikTok.
“It’s funny, this guy reached out to me over text saying he was a giant fan of what I do content-wise, and said ‘I have some information about the Big Ten if you would want to roll with it, I’m pretty connected and I’m like ‘okay, sure,’” recalled Kinsley.
You have to hand it to Sir Yacht. That exchange was indeed was funny because he fabricated the entire story.
You’ll notice there is no reflection in that story from the reporter on how a “digital marketing specialist” might be be interested in getting himself into local press. We are all worse off for it.
As The Rooster has stated, Justin Bibb was the clear choice to become the next mayor of Cleveland. However, his associating with a loser like Sir Yacht indicates that he is interested in the business of being able to snow over the idiots within his jurisdiction.
This meeting was not happenstance. His communications team publishing this photo would be enough to evict him at the earliest opportunity in a functioning democracy.
That eviction won’t happen. Instead Cleveland voters will live in the reality where their mayor is more accessible to a suburban TikTokker than he is everyday citizens.
THOSE WMDs. The greatest traveler you’ve never heard of… Evil at the door… The reincarnated… How many calories you burn on a hilly hike… How to make crispy chickpeas in the oven.